New Year... Fresh Start...

I'm back, and I'm hoping to be better at blogging this year than I was last.

Last year was a really tough year for me.  It was my second year of teaching and it made me totally question if what I was doing was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  After the riot in December, tons of dramatic political banter followed.  Parents became enraged, teachers felt unsafe, our principal was fired, our superintendent left, and many great teachers and an excellent assistant principal decided to leave our district and seek employment elsewhere.  I didn't enjoy my job last year.  I had many difficult students who no matter what I did, refused to accept my help and ended up becoming 9th grade repeaters.  It was just not a good year.

But now I am starting a new one.  A breath of fresh air... I hope!

Today was the first official full day of school and I got to know my kids a little bit.  Because I'm young, and many of my students are hormonal 14 and 15 year old boys, I got the usual questions as to whether or not I was single, or if I would consider dating a student.  I also got the inappropriate comments such as "Miss!  So-And-So was just looking at your butt!", or "Damn Miss! You're my teacher?  I could get used to this," while high-fiving his "boys".  Whatever.  I usually respond with, "No, I'm not single, I'm going to be getting married.  But I do have some single teacher friends who I could hook you up with... as long as you're into 65 year old men."  Or something of the sort to embarrass them and shut them up quickly.

All in all, I think I'm going to have a good group this year.  I'll give you a couple of today's anecdotes:

First, during my resource room, my students didn't really have much to work on so I allowed them to either draw or read.  One student, who we'll call Sleepy since all he ever talked about was how much he loved to sleep, decided to be a wise guy and draw a picture of what he sees when he sleeps: he scribbled all over the entire piece of paper with a black pen.  I then took it from him and exclaimed in front of the class that it was a brilliant masterpiece and that I was going to sell it on ebay and make millions off of him.  That's when one of my students, who has Autism and Tourettes and who we will call Gamer since he loves his video games, raised his hand and asked to take a look at "the masterpiece". He stared at it for a good 30 seconds and then looked up at me and said, "You know what?  I really see something here.  I see something through this drawing.  Do you know what I see?"  "No, what do you see Gamer?" I asked enthusiastically.  He motioned for me to come closer, I leaned in, and he whispered into my ear, "I see a penis."  Yeah... that one totally threw me off.  I just took the paper away and said, "Uhh... no I don't think I see that... what's your favorite video game again?"  Note to self: always be on your toes when it comes to Gamer.

The second story I have for you is about one of my students who has extreme OCD when it comes to germs and who I think may also have been recently diagnosed with schizophrenia.  He's scared to touch calculators, pens, and door handles or give any dap or high fives.  He's also only 4 feet tall.  We'll call him Howie (after Howie Mandel).  So today during resource, Howie asked if he could use the bathroom.  Twenty minutes after I had granted him permission to use the throne, I realized that he had never returned.  So I went out in the hall to get one of the security guards to go check on him.  Security came back out and informed me that he wasn't in there.  So as I go into panic mode, since this is the first freakin' day of school and I've already lost a kid, I ask security to sweep the building and put out an all call for him.  Ten minutes later, in comes Howie with a security escort who is barely able to contain his laughter.  I go into the hallway, after letting Howie back into the room, and the security guard informs me that he was found in an upstairs bathroom hiding in a bathroom stall trying to skip my class.  Great.  So I go back into my classroom and explain to Howie that he cannot skip classes.  His response: "Why not?  I did it in the middle school all the time."  I replied that we are now in the high school and that it cannot happen here.  So I ask, "So, from now on you are not going to skip, right?"  His respone: "I dunno.  Maybe."  This one is definitely going to be a handful.

In fact I think the majority of my kids are going to be a handful this year, but I think that they are also going to be goofy and fun for the most part.  **KNOCK ON WOOD**

I'm looking forward to the start of a new year.  I'm working with all new teachers this year, we have a bunch of new administrators, and a whole new batch of students.  Pretty much everything is brand spankin' new.  So I'm just going to remain optimistic!  Wish me luck!

And to all of you new teachers out there, here's my New Teacher Tip of the Day: Remain optimistic and make teacher friends.  They are the only ones who will truly be able to understand you!